which I hope will
arrive safely. As soon as you have read it, I want you to have it
carefully copied for me. There are many causes why I wish this to be
done. One will suffice. I want you to be my literary executor in case
of my death, and to have complete control of my plays, books, and papers.
As soon as I find I have a legal right to make a will, I will do so. My
wife does not understand my art, nor could be expected to have any
interest in it, and Cyril is only a child. So I turn naturally to you,
as indeed I do for everything, and would like you to have all my works.
The deficit that their sale will produce may be lodged to the credit of
Cyril and Vivian. Well, if you are my literary executor, you must be in
possession of the only document that gives any explanation of my
extraordinary behaviour . . . When you have read the letter, you will see
the psychological explanation of a course of conduct that from the
outside seems a combination of absolute idiotcy with vulgar bravado. Some
day the truth will have to be known--not necessarily in my lifetime . . .
but I am not prepared to sit in the grotesque pillory they put me into,
for all time; for the simple reason that I inherited from my father and
mother a name of high distinction in literature and art, and I cannot for
eternity allow that name to be degraded. I don't defend my conduct. I
explain it. Also there are in my letter certain passages which deal with
my mental development in prison, and the inevitable evolution of my
character and intellectual attitude towards life that has taken place:
and I want you and others who still stand by me and have affection for me
to know exactly in what mood and manner I hope to face the world. Of
course from one point of view I know that on the day of my release I
shall be merely passing from one prison into another, and there are times
when the whole world seems to me no larger than my cell and as full of
terror for me. Still I believe that at the beginning God made a world
for each separate man, and in that world which is within us we should
seek to live. At any rate you will read those parts of my letter with
less pain than the others. Of course I need not remind you how fluid a
thing thought is with me--with us all--and of what an evanescent
substance are our emotions made. Still I do see a sort of possible goal
towards which, through art, I may progress. It is not unlikely that you
may help me.

As rega